


the new gods are fresh-faced.

by onlyeli



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Classpect Powers (Homestuck), Classpects (Homestuck), Earth C (Homestuck), God Tier, Growing Up, Purple Prose, but also being gods, but never growing old, exploring the, pretentious bullshit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-12 22:40:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20572097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlyeli/pseuds/onlyeli
Summary: sit down with me and let me tell you about our gods. how they fought, and laughed, and lived. how they still live. how we take from them. how they keep giving.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> sup. this is p much just writing practise for me but i figured if i liked whatever pretentious poemy bs i came up with i should post it bc who doesnt love attention am i right!! im basically just waxing poetic about god tiers, powers and the affects of being gods on the kids i like best but if you have a request i'll see what i can do!

he handles broken clocks and burnt out cogs with fingers thin and bone and dusted at the knuckle. you will ask him how long, how long before it is fixed, and he will turn a blank slate stare on you and you will think of wither, of rot, of boiling over. and then he will smirk, and what erupts is not just heat, but warmth, too, and he will tell you not to worry.

he’s easy to spot, circling the sky and talking to the birds. there’s always something red and flashing too far away for you to see, to understand, to know entirely. don’t feel excluded. we have tried to greet him before, and we have yet to succeed. he will come to us when he is ready. instead, he sends the crows to eat from our hands. we think he wants them to trust us. only after them may he follow.

he fixes what he can. he helps who he must. you think he must be tired, but you haven’t seen him sleep.

he will stand with a slouch over the world as it dances and straighten his spine not for you but for himself. he will be selfish when he thinks no one is praying. that’s okay. the gods are young, and we forgive them when they need it.

/

when your heart breaks, seek him out. he is buried in machines and machination and ruin and salt, but when he learns you are looking, you will find him, eventually. explain your woe, your sorrow, how you want to take apart your ribs and fill them instead with flowers and wire and sugar. when he turns on you, do not flinch. he is far from benevolent, but his eyes will not sting.

destruction can mean many things, he will tell you in a voice that sounds like everyone you’ve ever loved and everyone that’s ever hurt you. how much those two voices overlap depends only on you.

when he presses the pads of his fingers to the parts that hurt, it’s okay to tell him you ache. he knows. he knows. he will be finished with the engine in your chest within the hour, and the raw edges, the sensitive splinters will be set aside in a jar he insists you take with you. when they are healed, they will find their way home.

it’s best to take heed when he tells you how troublesome it is to leave parts of yourself lying around, especially when they’re sharp.

besides, he will shrug, pulling his mask back over his angular, starspeckled face, you need the hurt. as much as you hate it, it’s a part of you.

//

some of our young gods died long ago, along the way, victim to their own wickedness, their own wayward. we don’t see them often and neither will you unless you ask for them, unless you find what they own and call on them to claim it.

///

please, don’t be scared when you see him, wirecrossed at the eyes and gold all over. he saved so many and lost so much. he won’t be kind to you, because he doesn’t know that you, too, have suffered - his pain is so great it leaves no room for anything else. he inherited it, and to seethe and feel is his birthright. if you do the same, you are the one infringing.

call him close to the trees and let him lean against one. the bees will know him, buzz fond and loud, nest in his hair, in his hands. eventually, he will be able to look you in the eye. he is the blindwild prophet, the forseer, the one you repent to.

he will become your sin, and he will destroy himself over and over to free you.

////

if it’s faith you seek, go to the beach. our youngest god is picky and temperamental and often cruel. his rules are the hardest to learn and the strictest to follow. if you are successful, if you meet him, you will understand.

bury your bare feet in the sand and turn your back on the sea. it’s cold and dark below the waves, too many twisting currents and moving landmarks. he likes our world better than his own, but saying that will upset him, and he is just as turbulent as a summer storm, just as wild and likely to pull you under. he may not like the water, but he is better in it than you are.

he pulls doubt from you in strings of light and fashions them into wings. destruction, he will insist, is his to define. destruction, he tells you, means one thing at a time.

sometimes, the gods disagree. we don’t interfere.

when you are full of glow and good, something in his eyes will change. you shouldn’t ask about it.

sometimes, the gods can only give us that which they cannot give themselves.

he will leave you on the shore and head homeward, to the bow of his ship. don’t follow him in. he won’t ask you to, but you may feel compelled to go after him. we’ve lost many because they were reckless and wanted to feel angelic again.

/////

he visits the despondent when we ask.

how can a death-god die? no, no, you misunderstand - he doesn’t call on the sick. just the suffering.

when you are staring at the backs of your eyelids and too heavy to do much more, when everything seems to lose that which makes it everything, he will ask you in a voice far too loud what exactly you need mending.

he thinks in gears and switches. you will need to translate your flesh into a language he understands.

if she comes with him, don’t panic. she will sit on his shoulder and paint jewels into his skin and he will work as if she is vital. she is.

the empty will be removed. the black hole will come back (it has roots, you see, and even gods are unwilling to dig their hands in too deep), but so will he, prepared to take that which removes the everything and crush it in his fist.

once, the others had tried, used their might and will and minds to wage war against the little circle of murk he had coxed up and out of your throat. after hours of attempts, he simply squashed it flat under his heel and sent them all on their way.

he is not friendly, nor is he pleasant company, but you think his intentions are good.

//////

one more story? very well.

we live in a world where the gods choose to be seen. they don’t ask us for much and we, maybe, should ask less of them.

so, when you meet the boy in the sky, or the smoke, or the stupor, or the sea, or the sulphur, thank them before you tell them your name. they have helped you before, and they remember you.

the new gods are fresh faced, but they are older than you could ever hope to know.

don’t ask them how they did it. don’t ask them what they sacrificed. they told me, once. i heard the story. i laughed and i cried in the company of our god-children and when they were done,

i stopped asking them for help.


	2. ii.

we found him in the mountains, belly deep in a cave billowing smoke. 

a search party of six scoured the jungle until they could be certain the clanging that shook them was not an earthquake but steel against stone, was not destruction but creation. we sent three more to bring them home and gathered ten to leave at next light. we had no idea what state he’d be in if he were cornered by folk in the nighttime.

the ropes we tied around our waists were too tight and yet we held onto each other far tighter. i’ve never been scared of the prince of heart, but the dark he’d surrounded himself with chilled me bone-deep and then some, piercing in the way it was insistent and heavy. i carried the red-welt proof of my companions for weeks, my hands printed crimson and magenta by theirs. 

he never hides from us because he means to. when he works, he does so until he’s consumed and he lets himself be because it’s easier than knowing he still needs to stop, wait, breathe. we don’t usually disturb him, but we were desperate. you understand that, don’t you? we were crying into our coffees and returning engagement rings. i remember finding an envelope in a hedge and a girl in the street who couldn’t breathe for wailing. 

it sounds very melodramatic now, but that’s because you know him frequent, see him regular. he keeps us all in check because he knows how we get when he’s gone. i've told you before that we rely on them too much - do you believe me, now? now that you know how quickly we forget our love when he isn't there to raze the rot from our souls?

it took him half my lifetime to learn how to cut around the good and even longer to practise rinsing it clean. i still remember how his hands shook when we laid ourselves out for him, how he knew with a certainty we couldn't breach that he'd bring us nothing but ruin. it's with a bitter and angry arrogance that he supposes he'd bring the world to its knees. his despondency runs strong as the currents he lives by. our princes feel fiercely and so often train the crosshairs of their hate toward their own breast. 

what? oh, yes, we found him. he was wielding a hammer like he was going to war, forcing a slab of iron into submission against a rock so hot it hissed. i remember he looked surprised to see us - pleasantly or not, he clearly wasn't expecting to be searched for. he became resigned again shortly afterwards; the king of the consorts is a cynic still, and he knows we hound him for our peace. the look he wore then, i still remember now. it makes me feel fractured. 

he was oil-slicked and tired. we'd seen him in states of disrepair before, you understand - what makes our gods so intimidating isn't their infallibility, it's their shakiness. we try to forget they were once like us, but they make no attempt to disguise it. their humanity isn't something they're ashamed of. 

the prince of heart didn't once shift the shades he uses to hide from us, but he saw us each individually nonetheless, stern and almost fatherly. it's hard to believe he wants anything but the best for us. 

he listened when we explained, brought forward folk with eyes so dark the forge dimmed around them. his tools stilled in the hearth, white-warm at the points and sparking over the coals. i got lost in the heat instead of listening to plights i'd heard a thousand-fold. it struck me harder than his mallet how fragile we had let ourselves become, how easy it was for us to turn tail from ourselves to dive headfirst into the maw of a mountain at the promise of salvation and safety. we had forgotten how to make homes inside our hearts and instead expected him to teach us, over and over again. we were a choir that listened to every sermon only to forget it the second he stepped down from the pulpit. 

i don't blame us. it's so hard to fight against oneself. he won against our ache so easily every time he took up the sword. it's just so simple to ask him for his favour, ask him to save us. 

i don't know for sure what he was building. i suspect we don't see a lot of what he works on in the dark of the cave on the hill. some things, i think, he must want for himself. some things he keeps close to his chest, in the same spot he opens us up and cleans us out. yes, i asked him, my voice trembling with nerves - i was naïve then, still grappling with the promise of parts of my soul in his cupped hands. he simply shook his head, told me that sometimes keeping your hands busy is just an excuse to let your mind wander. 

i told him i hoped he finished it, one day. he thanked me. said he hoped so, too. 

maybe the gods still need challenges. maybe he warps metal against stone knowing full well the outcome will never be something that satisfies him. it's a secret he keeps and a question i harbour, in the in-between of my ribs and my want. if he wants to work away at an impossible thing, i say we let him. so much looks effortless when our gods take to the sky and fix our broken - if they need to work, they shouldn't have to explain themselves. 

he lead us in a procession back down the mountainside as we untied our bonds and linked our fingers in promise and pride instead. he gave no orders but we obeyed regardless, skipping and singing love songs on the hillside, reassured in the sunrise-pink wake of our heart-god and his steady mechanic's hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *includes a reference to my dirkjake fic* poetry was invtented on onlyeli.ao3.com. anyways i love dirk this was super fun to do even if i did it on my phone at work in secret. feedback is always appreciated!!


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